One of my teacher's teachers famously said (or it should
have become famous) that one of the most difficult things in the
world to do is to read a poem. Now, a few decades later, he might
have broadened the scope to include the supreme difficulty of
reading anything, or of focusing one's attention. It may always
have been easier in the field of literary study to trace sources
and influences, to lecture on history or biography, and thereby
avoid facing that poem directly on its own terms. But what about
truly focusing on that poem or that play these days?

Currently, it's a grim prospect. The physical fact of a book itself
seems threatened in view of the assumed virtue of paperlessness. At
one time not long ago it was automatic that one would bring one's
book to class; now it is not only not assumed, but not even
common practice, in literature classes!

You can tell yourself you'll save some bucks and read texts online.
You'll light upon the most accessible Shakespeare, for example: one
of many irresponsible online editions that fail to include act,
scene, and line numbers. You can tell yourself that you'll read this
crap.com edition of Twelfth Night and when it comes time for
writing a paper you'll consult some other responsible edition that
does include line numbers, but you know you won't: you'll either
leave out line numbers altogether and hope for mercy in grading, or
you won't quote from the play at all and just generate empty blab
with no textual support.

You can tell yourself you'll really read the crap.com version of
Twelfth Night, but you start to suspect that instead of scrolling
down a bit to get past the first twenty lines of Act I, scene i, since
your finger is headed to the keyboard anyway, maybe, just maybe, only
one or two clicks away is complete salvation! Maybe the perfect
study guide on Twelfth Night, or something cool that will save
tons of time reading and accomplish the same thing, whatever that is.
Four and a half hours later when the sheer volume of the LadyGagaBlog
freezes your screen, you realize how unfair it is to have to read so much
for class. Besides, Delahoyde will probably show film clips from the
required act, and that will delude you into thinking you've "covered"
the material (vs. experienced).

Comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell speculated that although people
sometimes toss about the term "the meaning of life," they don't really
want the meaning of life nor does that term make any sense. ("What's the
meaning of a flower?") Instead, what people may be looking for is an
experience of life. This makes sense to me. And it's what is
happening less and less often. So now one of the most difficult things
to do in life is to experience ... anything: a poem or a play included.
The world crafted around us seems designed to tempt us to forego even
the effort to experience anything. We know all those piles of information,
all those texts and what "experts" think of them, are accessible "world
wide," if we do ever need to see that stuff. And that's pretty much enough
for us. If it ever comes to it, I'll just google that stuff. But it'll
never come to it, and neither will you.

Read. For real. You'll be astounded what happens with your mind and your
soul.

Homework:

I ask for frequent short commentaries -- a couple paragraphs
is usually expected -- as we procede through the literature.
I've always found online delivery of homework in the form of
postings to discussion threads to be the most valuable kind
of exercise, because students can respond to or build on
what someone else has initiated; so repetitions are fewer than
if I ask for individual hand-ins. Therefore each semester I
set up an online discussion space for the class. When you know
I've asked for a homework posting but something goes wrong with
the electronics, connectivity, computers, or your access, the
default always is not to blow it off with a computer excuse
but simply to write out a commentary and turn it in at the start
of the coming class period.

These homework submissions receive points, usually from about
9 to 12 points each. (Other points are accrued with in-class
minor group work or sometimes the occasional vote.) A few
optional extra credit options will occur during the semester,
but really every assigned posting is an extra-credit option,
since there is no real limit to the number of points you can
earn. I occasionally find myself awarding something like 16
points on an 11-point assignment.

How is that possible for you?
If you seem to be earning only mediocre points for online
homework, then aim to include specific and correctly documented
quotations in your postings and to comment on these with some
degree of intricacy or precision. By scanning others' postings,
you should be able to tell at least some of the contours of
point-awarding. Some people post only a few lines and include
primarily vague personal reactions instead of anything engaging.
Some do little more, even far into the semester, than protest
their ostensible confusion at the reading (and god forbid they
should explore a little -- even with obvious online resources
-- to understand the basics of the scenes). Naturally these kinds
of responses earn only a couple points out of 10 or 11. Others,
when prompted to focus on something from a coming act, choose
instead to go backwards and quote something from a previous
reading already discussed in class. And often these are mere
repetitions of perspectives we've hashed out. The vast numbers
of postings are better than this and gravitate towards key questions
and issues. They usually receive 9 or 10 points out of 11 or 12.
Truly superb postings for 12 out of 12 tackle something unique
or unusual among the other threads, and do tend to be longer
not because of filler but because of intricacy and analysis
of the implications of certain quoted moments. People also
receive lots of points who check in, post, check in later,
join a threaded discussion, answer other people's questions,
do a bit of looking something up to add to the discussion,
etc.

Exams:

Since exams tend to be heavily quotation-based, you can arm
yourself well by noting passages we spend time on. Those who bring
their texts to class give themselves an advantage this way, more
efficiently committing at least a visual impression of textual
passages to memory as they check or mark passages discussed.

Since I can include only so much on any exam and since I want to
avoid "trivial pursuit," notes you take in class are the best
resource for later exam preparation. Think of what seemed to be
the one or two most important points during each class period;
almost certainly those are the concepts I'm trying to have
represented on the exam -- and usually illustrated by a quotation.

In lieu of a "study guide" -- and I'm baffled as to what such a
thing would look like for a class such as this -- my online notes,
which consist sometimes of summaries, sometimes with lots of commentary
and quotations, are said by students to be a very useful resource for
exam preparation. This makes sense, since if a quotation is important
enough for an exam, it's almost certainly something I thought was
important enough to include in my web pages.